Interdum stultus opportuna loquitur...

Sunday, May 07, 2006

J'aimeRANT: What Does This Have To Do With...

Note - from June 24th 2009, this blog has migrated from Blogger to a self-hosted version. Click here to go straight there.

E verythng in the world can - in the limiting case - be slapped into one of two binary categories (the categories themselves can be left to the reader for the moment). White/non-White... right/wrong... good/evil. Dick Cheney/Things with a non-pus-oozing soul...

OK - I confess... there are things other than Dick Cheney which have souls that ooze pus. Not many things, but one or two - many of which can't be observed outside of episodes of Buffy or Angel.

I have never really made clear the extent to which I owe my Woggo mate Mav, for telling me to watch Buffy. I had seldom watched it, but he told me that you had to stick with it for a couple of episodes, then I would get it. I did, and as a result... I did. It is almost for this reason alone (but also for the fact that he is Wog of the Week, for the last 300 weeks in a row) that he will always have a fee bed anywhere that I reside.

Still, we have not got to my favourite dichotomy yet.

My favourite dichotomy is the simplest dichotomy in the Universe (unless you're suffering from schizophrenia... I know I am).

That simple dichotomy, for which I will use the language of a peasant population (the French, although you could use any European population) - is the simple Froggish dichotomy... j'aime/j'aime pas. Put into non-gibberish: me likey/me no likey.

Me likey lots of things - movies in which something blows up; Cobram Tasty cheese (please, please, someone send me an aid package containing a six-pack of Four 'n' Twenties, some Cobram Tasty, and some Don Pepperoni!!); Julien's baguettes; movies in which something blows up. Maybe I mentioned that twice.

War Nerd. William S Lind's strategic thinking. Movies in which something blows up.

Cheap, sweet white wine. (Ultra cheap, if I've got a bottle of fruit liqueur at home to make Kir - which is named after a Dijon abbe, not a Ukrainian General). The food at Foyer Viet Nam in Rue Monge in the 5th. Collingwood (GO PIES... 3rd at the moment, but unlikely to win a game post-May). Lance Klusener. Canterbury Crusaders. Rob Sitch (who I met in the green room at Channel 10 the night Jim Dunn was on). How Green Was My Cactus and Chicken Man (you don't even remember them, do you? It was back when people like me listened to the radio). Ren & Stimpy... Futurama... Beavis & Butthead... Johnny Bravo.

When I think of the list for 'me no likey' (you have to say that like Hop Sing from Bonanza) , the list is actually really short. After all, you are talking about a lad who watched "Tomorrow People" and "Blake's Seven" as well as "My Favorite Martian" and "Bewitched". I even know who Bo, Hope, and Marlena are (they still look the same!!). I guess I mostly don't like false hope. Bonanza, Brady Bunch - hat sort of thing. Blairworld.

I am glad - so glad... sometimes I feel so glad... (excuse the ripoff of the Beatles' "It's Just Another Day") that Blair got handed his hat in the latest UK local elections. I was in London for the results, and it was like an episode of Fawlty Towers (Nobody Mention The War). The compliant Pommie media was falling all over itself to exculpate Blair's toadying to Bush, and trying to blame the rout on things like the fact that John Prescott has apparently rooted some bird. (A huge improvement over the boy-love which permeates much of Washington, I'll give you the tip). It's increasingly clear to me that there's a bit of 'man on man action' which has protected Blair lo these few years. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, but frankly if I was a fudge-packer I would be honest about it... but of course it's the packees that are the most blackmailable, and you just know that somewhere someone has those photos of Blair on all fours, date chockers - but likewise half of the editors of London rags are probably also in similar photo's, bums covered in Crisco spreadeagled over a vaulting horse...).

You might be surprised to note that fudge-packing (either as 'pitcher' or 'catcher') is one of those things that for me falls into neither category; personally it's never been remotely of interest, but I would not send those who choose that lifestyle off to concentration camps. (Whereas the dickwad who tooted me at the Shell on Boulevard Raspail - who just about shit himself when I got out of the car and started walking towards his HP'd Renault Megane - would go straight to the gas chamber in a GT-led Reign of Terror... "being a dick" would be a capital offense).

Drug prohibition: j'aime pas (but also drug use, personally, j'aime pas unless it's steroids or ephedrine, in which case give me a call!!). And to those of you who think that booze is a drug... grow up, you retard.

I also think that there is the odd thing for which "j'aime pas" is just not enough.

We all know that women aren't that smart (after all, men stopped wearing high heels and makeup in the 17th century), but honestly, could women's makeup ads be any more insulting to the intelligence? They have even started using "self-assessment" as their "clinical test" results.

Let's see: "woman A" is dumb enough to participate in a trial for "glop B". And somehow her self-assessment of its wrinkle-reducing powers is meant to be taken seriously... leave to one side that their sample sizes are nowhere near large enough to satisfy Kolmogorov's Central Limit Theorem...

OK - it's not just advertisign of women's face-goo. Sanitary pad adverts are also off-the-scale on the hate-o-meter. Shampoo ads, likewise.

Of course, I love any ad in which there is a tit-shot (which is half the ads on French telly). The breast is a thing of beauty and wonder, n'importe ou on le trouve (no matter where you find it).

I hate the New Age. J'aime pas.

 BA lost my luggage. J'aime pas (especially since I then had to walk from Maisse to Noisy-sur-École, which is a lazy 12 km).

Let me digress onto the walking thing...

It was pissing down when I got to Maisse - and it didn't stop.

I faced it a like a legionnaire. I confronted, I adapted, I overcame. (And when I got home I even denied myself a nice hot bath until the following day). And today I walked into Milly-la-Forêt to buy bread - 3 km each way. That's how hard I am.

I point out here that I did not hitch-hike. I walked. I was always on the opposite side of the road (thus indicating "I would not accept a lift from you peasants even if you offered"). I covered the distance in less than 2 hours, and I was wearing jeans which were too big (and no belt - ot was in my bag) and a leather coat which weighs 6kg (you think I'm jokng? Line up and wear the thing yourself).

I did the Battle Efficiency Test (16km with pack and rifle) aged 18 and I now know I could do the same again tomorrow. It's 16km with an obstacle course thrown in... piece of piss.

Back to the list.

Goths... for some reason which I don't understand, J'aime. You might think I'm joking, but I am not; I reckon I am an analytical sort of bloke, but try as I might I cannot work out what it is about Goth-ness that (to coin a Derek & Clive phrase) "gives me the 'orn".

The trees around the house at Noisy-sur-Ecole have burst into full leaf in the few days that I was in London. Finally, the sticks in our front yard look like trees. It's beautiful. J'aime.

And to think - the unspoken thing about Rantophilia (unspoken until now, that is) is that any dickhead who turned up would be more than welcome. The two young Aussies I met at the airport on the way back from London are on an open invitation to give me a ring and I will buy them a beer; we had an hour on the RER from Charles de Gaulle to talk absolute rubbish to each other, and we came to the same conclusion: that the other party was not a complete dickwad.

Seriously though; if you're ever in Paris, drop me a line (my e-mail address is the most unimaginative in he world, and  ends in "gmail.com")... I lied to the ginger shortass Pom who tried to steal our table in Putney the other day when I said  ....

Share a table? With YOU? You're fucking kidding yourself mate. I'm Australian - we are picky about who we drink with...